


Proshchai (Goodbye, Goodbye)

by Liondragon (Sameshima_Shuzumi)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon Dialogue, Canon Temporary Character Death, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, F/M, Identity Issues, Memory Alteration, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov Friendship, The Avengers (2012) Compliant, Wordcount: 10.000-30.000, Wordcount: Over 10.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-05
Updated: 2015-07-05
Packaged: 2018-04-05 07:31:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4171272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sameshima_Shuzumi/pseuds/Liondragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Steve Rogers loved and lied to Natasha Romanoff.</p><p>  <span class="small"> MCU AU following <em>Natalie, Natalya, Natasha</em> by wintergrey, wherein Natasha is older than she looks. </span></p>
            </blockquote>





	Proshchai (Goodbye, Goodbye)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Natalie, Natalya, Natasha](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3903364) by [wintergrey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintergrey/pseuds/wintergrey). 



> Via Google translating, the title amounts to Прощай. Master Russian forum, definition may spoil: http://goo.gl/2mTUj1 Fic contains a sprinkle of Steve's body dissonance issues, casual mentions of religion and less casual of canon-typical death & dying. Please do not repost in full without permission.    
>  This is an instant and a-little-to-the-left AU response to the lovely Natalie, Natalya, Natasha by wintergrey. It asks the same question — what if Natasha had rendezvoused with Steve before he became Captain America? — except set firmly in the MCU. 

_Sing this when you leave your lover_    
_She'll always know you're thinking of her_    
_\- The Andrews Sisters, 1939 ([yt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwO5BMw0ypM))   _

When Steve steps off the ramp into the sunlight, he manages not to trip. Her hair is flame-red in a field of gunmetal, and maybe it was that hue before. With Steve's eyesight at the time, he wouldn't have known one way or another. She's dressed like this century suits her. 

Agent Coulson introduces their current names to each other.

"Agent Romanoff. Captain Rogers."

Steve's been waiting for this since he opened the file to find her face on the hand-held tablet. In person she seems smaller, and then she seems just the right size to dip into a kiss, and then she seems larger-than-life. He can't help but feel shaken loose, closer to a smile than he has been in... too long. 

He does remember his manners. (Does not call her Natalie.)

"Ma'am."

"Hi," she says, as though she meets Captain America every day. As she passes a message to Coulson, Steve tells himself not to read too much into the casual note. Even if it edges on familiar. He doesn't miss her appraising look, and he scans the bustling flattop instead of meeting it, unsure if it's the same incredulity at Captain America being alive, or the rarer evaluation of someone who'd known Steve _before_ , meeting him as Captain America for the first time. It could be either. He'd gathered that she was one of Fury's people, so even if she weren't a SHIELD agent, she's probably read all of Steve's files. (Peggy liked to say there's always one more file.)

Nat... Natasha chats like she's catching him up; Steve plays along, bemused. Her accent's scoured clean of Brooklyn, but then again his own public speaking voice is so much dishwater too. He falls into step beside her, directly downwind. The sense-memory of the scent of her hair washes over him, and with it comes the rustle of her sheets, glinting perfume bottles, the curl of worn ballet slippers.

Steve blinks away the blur in his eyes. He spots Dr. Banner and advances quickly to offer his hand. No matter what he thinks of Banner, it's imperative that the doctor knows where he stands in the greater strategic picture. Whatever happened before his last tour of duty ended must be swept out of the way. All that matters is the Tesseract's not in the ocean anymore, and neither is Steve.

"Well, this is actually kind of familiar," he's saying.

As the air grows thin, he follows her, downwind.

*

As she walks, she casts a few curious glances over her shoulder. Her gaze pulls him like a thread through the unfamiliar corridors, even as he commits the layout to memory. 

Part of Steve wants to say something. He did read all their files, though, and Natasha Romanoff's date of birth is listed as 1984, not 1914 or thereabouts. He remembers how she left him the first time (how it didn't even hurt), and figures if she has a cover, he won't be the one to blow it in front of God and Nick Fury. 

It's still on the tip of his tongue to ask why a pretty ( _undoubtedly_ ) Russian ( _probably_ ) spy ( _incredible yet likely_ ) brought home a scrawny little guy like Steven Grant Rogers. Less surprising, if the Russians gave her a boost like his, that she'd be with an agency which recruits extraordinary people. Meeting again isn't even that much of a coincidence; Steve's crossed paths with all kinds, and even Howard's son may put in an appearance. 

Then in the middle of the bridge he sees her gracefully drop to kneel beside an active monitor. It shows an image of Agent Barton. She touches it like she's flicking dust off a picture frame. 'Current location: unknown. Status: compromised.' Steve turns away, swallowing the lump in his throat, stuck between _she must be real worried_ and _I'm late again_. One more thing he's got to keep a lid on.

*

The tightness around her eyes does not abate. Steve knows she's got a timer ticking away every second of Barton's captivity. The shield at his shins, he keeps his eyes down and reads up on Germany. 

*

Steve finds her with Barton.

Steve thinks: 'Not once has she ever lied to me.' 

When Barton says he can fly, Steve simply glances at Natasha and waits for a sign.

Logically it follows. Peggy certainly didn't suffer fools when it came to dangerous missions. If Natasha has any doubts about Barton, she wouldn't put him at her back, therefore Steve can trust him to have his. This is an attack on their whole world; they don't have the luxury of a tribunal.

She nods. Steve makes the call. They're going.

Later, he'll look back at that moment and know the real reason why.

*

_we got this. it's good, go._

*

They're at the bottleneck of a nightmare, fighting for the survival of humanity, and his every nerve feels like it's going to ignite.

Fighting beside Natasha is an unfamiliar joy. Steve can ride that edge of battle and she's one less body in motion he has to figure out. Of course, compared to her he feels clumsy— almost like he's been dumped back into the first weeks with the show-girls, the serum new in his blood. A melee's no place for fancy moves, but next to her? She's so smooth that it makes him want to snap every throw, land every kick, take out seven when he winds up for three.

But when she asks for a lift, Steve's so thrown off that he asks if she's sure.

Natasha tosses off "It's gonna be fun," her face now tight with concentration as she times the chariots, and as Steve calculates the angles and forces, something flips inside him that's not frustration or despair.

She trusts him.

He lets her fly.

*

Stark lets him watch the footage of Natasha's encounter with Loki. Steve locks his teeth against asking if he's got clearance to have it.

It's uncomfortable, it's impressive, and it makes Steve's stomach churn and his heart speed up. 

"Damn, girl," says Stark. He doesn't whistle but Steve hears it anyhow. "You know, she jabbed me in the neck with a syringe, once. Saved my life, beside the point, she is terrifying."

"She's on our team," says Steve. 

"Very glad. So fucking glad," says Stark, and Steve wants to echo the sentiment aloud. Then Stark says — Tony, Tony says, "Lied to the Lie-Smith. You go, Natalie," and Steve ruthlessly changes the subject to Coulson's death just to cover the quaver in his voice.

*

Steve stops by her floor to have a few words, ostensibly to check up on Barton. At rest, she is both older and younger than he recalls. Sunlit from the ceiling-high windows, shadows on her lap, she seems even more beautiful, and not because his senses are better. 

Before-the-war was a long time ago, by his count or the rest of the world's. The exact details of their tryst have grown vague in his mind. Of her there's only an impression of a sadness carved out of youth. And the jerk of his pencil as he recorded her curves. He remembers shading in the shadow under her lip, and kissing her because she asked. Her lithe arms coaxing him through every revelation.

It occurs to Steve that if she's his first love, she might have lain the groundwork for his last.

He leans on her every word. Tries to laugh when she makes a wry joke. She looks and smells and gestures the same, it's not a mistake, and he wants to say these things out loud.

Steve doesn't like lying, but she — both Natalie in her soft knit sweater and Natasha in her care-worn cotton hoodie — has presented him with a picture of deception, and each time he's accepted it. His polite queries are starting to be answered by equally polite deflections and her cool, assessing gaze. He shifts his weight uncertainly. It's a rare clear day, and from this side of Stark's tower, he can make out the outline of the Williamsburg Bridge. He's tracing those familiar lines when it hits him.

_She doesn't remember._

She hasn't merely misplaced the memory of him. Of that night. Has she? 

Did Steve deny this in his own mind, or did Loki, scrabbling through hers, simply dismiss her earlier memories as irrelevant?

What kind of mental block would stymie a god? One of her own making, or...?

A touch gently, she takes control of the conversation. They talk about the team. Plans and strategies. These are concrete things, these are objects they are skilled in manipulating. He studies her, composed as a painting, and tries to come to terms with the fact that for whatever reason, Natalie's long gone.

*

He decides to take Tony's suggestion, or ham-fisted offer, of taking his restored bike on a long ride far away from New York City. By his reckoning he's saved it twice in less than a year. It'll keep.

He'll come back to Natasha, though. If he can stand her cool gaze for a little while longer, maybe he'll muster up the courage to see if Peggy remembers him. Or not.

*

Embarrassingly, he dreams of Natalie in a quaint bed-and-breakfast with paper-thin walls. In the dream, she shows him how to take it slow, how to find the sweet secret places of a woman, how to melt into her warmth without stealing it for himself. He remembers her laugh, different and the same. She taught him how breathe through... an orgasm, is that the current word? She taught him that, though not how to talk to women, since she did most of the talking.

She must've liked teaching.

Steve realizes what her file says between the lines, and how specialized those particular lessons must have been. 

He groans as he gets free of the covers. Dust motes stir in the low sunlight. Everything in this rented room is an antique; that familiarity (that comfort) explains the dream. And now, thanks to the serum, those faded memories have been retraced in bright, permanent colors.

For the first time, he wonders how _he_ ended up with the beauty of that evening, and how (or if) she ended up drawing a blank. It hardly seems fair.

_She said she would try to forget me._

Around and around, Steve circles the adjacent gardens, thinking: _'What now?'_

*

It's Peggy who sets him straight. One evening, weeks after their tearful reunion, he stumbles into talking shop with her. Steve asks, obliquely, naming no names. Not that a poor deception would stop Peggy Carter, but she wouldn't pry... not in his company, anyway.

"Goodness, the amount of research into that horrid stuff," Peggy says, flapping her hand. "The Soviets were the worst. We heard some ominous rumbles from Red China, as well. Our side was heavily into chemical alterations, which at least had some practical value. The best poisons make for excellent drugs."

They both glance at her bedside table, stuffed with white and amber bottles, and laugh. Steve pointedly lifts a lotus-shaped atomizer of perfume and places it at the fore.

Peggy pats his hand absently. "Some of it was beyond the pale, psychics and telepaths, fascinating stuff that was not terribly operationally sound. But memory— people were always interested in memory."

"Our century did seem stuck on that," Steve allows. He ought to slow her down a bit, since she wears out quicker when she's on a roll. But he's selfish, and he loves to see her like this. Stealing their moments is why they're here, after all.

Peggy chuckles. "There is a thriving industry based upon nostalgia. As you are well aware. Things aren't meant to be remembered, you see. We forget them all on our own. These esoteric measures were simply complicated ways of helping that along."

*

And it's Clint who mentions the red in her ledger. It's a clue not to be taken as lightly as it was dropped: the sort of intimate secret Natasha might keep from herself. 

Steve spends a fraught couple of weeks in the library reading up on the history of espionage on American soil, never looking anything up or checking anything out because Natasha said agencies tracked that sort of thing. 

For weeks, Steve lies awake aching for Natasha Romanoff. 

'Born 1984.' He has no doubt now that she was on assignment when he met her. 

Does he really want to expand her ledger by an additional half-century?

He has another, more ill-advised thought that letting Natasha's dead secrets stay dead might... protect her.

Steve starts laughing as soon as he thinks it. Natasha doesn't need that kind of protection, and certainly not from the likes of him. Peggy might shoot him all over again for even considering such a thing.

*

He asks.

"Do you have any regrets?"

As expected, Natasha looks affronted. Steve holds his ground. He can't think of any way to broach the subject without telling her everything. Given that SHIELD had to vet her as a defecting enemy, whatever happened in her past couldn't be that much of an operational liability. Steve is fairly sure Fury would screen anything _personally_ harmful to her.

He does have to know if Natasha feels like she's missing some gap that he might be able to fill. If he can help her.

"Is that why you've been weird around me?"

Steve starts. She twitches her brow, deliberately, to let him know his tells are terrible. Natasha's always tossing it back, always pressing. It's her job, and it's her first impulse. Another part of the natural order of things which Steve has yet to get used to.

"I've worked with... with operatives before. People in that life. Your line of work. They wouldn't take kindly to my asking either." Steve doesn't have to fake his sheepish smile. "You don't have to answer."

Natasha seems placated by his obvious attempt to buy her time. At last, with a minute shrug, she says, "I don't have the luxury of regret."

"If you did? I mean, what would you get back, if you could?" Steve stuffs his hands in his pockets, and hopes he's not making a hash of this.

"No," she says quickly. "There is nothing I would want back. Everything I have, I can use. If they made me, or unmade me, it's beside the point. I suppose," she says, tilting her head, her red curls bouncing on her pale shoulder, "I would regret failures within my areas of expertise. Not being fast enough. Needing two shots instead of one. You know."

Steve has to try again. He did before. He has more chances to try, now. "Not even for happiness?"

"Asking for yourself, Cap?" she presses. Always pressing.

It's not fair that he wants her answers, yet skates by without revealing much of himself at all. The question hovers in the air. He takes his hands out, opens them. They're shaking. "I know what you mean about not being fast enough."

They drop the subject.

*

Without Coulson, Strike Team Delta falls to the wayside. Steve gets the impression that whatever SHIELD's new direction might be, Clint-and-Natasha as a precision scalpel of a team has little place in it. There are other agencies eager to pick up the slack. The threats handled by SHIELD are one step from Avenger-sized, now.

Clint and Natasha don't seem too broken up about it, and the rest of them are hesitant to ask. Steve's a bit chagrined to find that everyone's more worried about him than they are about Clint. The distant past makes them uncomfortable, even if it was only a few months ago for Steve. He thinks that says more about the present day than it does about him.

They want him to make a decision.

So he does. "I'm going to ask Fury if I can sign on full-time at SHIELD. In Washington."

Natasha raises a brow. "You're telling _me_? Do you need a permission slip, Steven?"

"I'm also going to request you as a partner." Steve dips his gaze shyly. "If you'd like."

"Why?" says Natasha coolly.

Steve knows her, Natasha, well enough by now to know this means the best way to interrogate him is to simply ask. He's proud of that even if no one else is. "I want to train with you. I can catch up on cultural touchstones on my own time," he waves his little notebook, "but the ways in which people try to kill me at close quarters? I can't stay seven decades behind on that."

"That would put a damper on your day," Natasha agrees.

"You're the best. And," Steve hopes and prays he's not blushing, "You're a good teacher."

"I think, Captain, that I may have to accept."

Natasha's eyes remain cool. Steve thinks he remembers that. Then he thinks this is brand new, this is wholly Natasha.

*

They move their things to Washington together. Clint helps. He's dozing on her couch in the back of the truck, like he's giving his blessing to the new venture. At least of late he seems less haunted and more preoccupied. 

He's not the only one. "May I call you 'Nat'?" Steve asks, once they clear the worst of the traffic.

"Gosh, that's awfully forward of you, Captain Rogers," says Natasha, thumping her cheek with her tongue.

Two days of packing and lifting her things, and Steve's nearly called her Natalie a dozen times. 'Nat' is safer. Only Clint calls her 'Tasha'.

And: "It's odd calling you Widow on the job. Not that it's... Sorry about that. I'm sure you've put a lot of years into that name."

For some reason, this catches her off-guard. She doesn't say anything for a whole mile. "I don't always get out what I put in. Sure, 'Nat' is fine. Besides, Black Widow is a title. And it's a mouthful on the comm channels."

Steve grins. "Thanks, Nat."

*

It bothers him. The more Steve thinks about her timeline, the nastier the taste in his mouth. It's not his life, and Natasha would never accept his pity, but Steve's fought and fought to stay himself for so long that he can't fathom choosing to change so often.

Sometimes she changes from moment to moment just for the heck of it. He can imagine Tony chortling in his ear that she's 'trolling' him.

At the same time, that awareness makes him train harder. Get better. Try more new techniques, get up again after he makes an ass of himself, work till he's mastered them. Because he's woken up in the age of the inexplicable, and given himself, given Natasha, given the seventy years since he stepped into the casket, given the odds— there is no way on God's green earth that Steve Rogers is the only super-soldier out there.

He has to be as ready as she is.

If he keeps this secret from (for) her, even more.

*

To get to know Natasha is to discover all the ways she does not show herself. 

"I know how you are, Rogers," she says playfully, flipping a record between her hands like she doesn't know its rarity. "You gravitate to what's familiar."

Steve wants to retort, 'Oh yeah? Why do you think I chose you?' 

He holds back. It's not the same. He's not the same, and in a flash he realizes that for all her curves and confidence, Natalie-of-before wouldn't recognize him now.

Almost considering a grab for the record, he moves into her space, smells vanilla and sandalwood. She wears perfume when she's off-duty. Ordered online, she says, different scent every time. Despite himself he looks quizzical at that; she looks at him the same way, like looking in a mirror. Probably tangling with the riddle of why she may poke around his record collection when Deputy Director Hill can barely get him to comment on the weather. Nat would have a point— they are alone, have been alone a few times in his private apartment. It feels no more out-of-bounds than sewing up a dancer's costume in the corner of a makeshift dressing room, or rolling out of bed in his drawers to answer the urgent rap of a harried ATS courier. Merely informal. 

"I change my mind," says Natasha, kicking her boots in a way that, somehow, Steve thinks Natalie was never free to do. "You don't like it." 

Steve keeps an eye on the rotating vinyl disc. "There's nothing wrong with having _preferences_."

"You say don't, but you do," Nat prods. 

Good Lord, does it always have to be an interrogation? "Play it or put it back in the sleeve. I went all the way to West Virginia to pick it up."

"Grumpy," she smirks, with a disconcerting flick of the tip of her tongue. She sets the record on the player. Brings the needle down. He's not sure if she's mocking, or if she's about to lecture him about trusting people on the internet. He's had a lingering suspicion that she's handling him like an asset, and also that toying with his sensibilities is for her an amusing bonus. He's not even sure if she likes this music. Or if she'd share her real opinion if he asked. 

"Yeah, yeah," he says, switching her empty beer for a full one. "I got that reference." 

She grins. Taps their bottles.

The record pops but doesn't skip. 

Today, this year, (this century) he's getting to know Natasha. Even if it's like not getting to know anyone at all.

*

At her side, surveying the field of engagement, he thinks her presence might be the one thing grounding him in this century. The exact distance between the top of her head and the slope of his shoulder, the cant of her hips when she stands (always) at the ready, the ceramic calm on her face— the reality of Natasha is nothing familiar, and Steve is more comfortable with her than with his own uniform.

(He wonders how he can miss a girl who's standing right beside him.)

*

Then Natasha starts trying to fix him up with half the intelligence community.

Steve knows it's a mixture of rookie hazing and a misguided concern for his lack of social life. The worst of it is that Steve can't tell her that she used to know _exactly_ why either won't work. He did spend two decades as a sickly outcast with solitary hobbies. It's in his file. It'll be good for Natasha to figure that one out herself. Alternately, she already has, and she's hell-bent on dragging him out there anyway, like Bucky did back in Brooklyn, back in their day.

Of course, Steve has probably let on that he thinks the whole thing is funny, which only serves to encourage her.

(Steve finds an old picture of himself before the serum, and realizes he has next to no memories of being ashamed. A bit bashful, perhaps, and irritated with all the well-meaning pity. Maybe because it was the only body issued to him at the time. Dr. Erskine's words and a hundred sermons in his ears, Steve tries to quash this backdated discomfort— it's the lowest form of ingratitude to resent his original body _now_.)

Natasha's not-so-covert efforts do make for better scuttlebutt around the Triskelion. Steve can't help it if a bunch of spies forget that he has super-hearing. It's a tad more entertaining to tune into saucy rumors and side-bets instead of the usual grating hero worship. As for the blush-inducing embarrassment, well. That's completely different, and feels exactly the same.

When Natasha starts up the whole operation, he does consider asking her out. For a single second. The idea's discarded. For one, it would feel like two-timing Peggy.

For another, it would feel like... betraying Natalie.

*

Maria Hill sweeps out of Fury's office and remarks, "From a certain angle, you look like a turtle."

Natasha has the bad graces to snicker.

Ever conscientious of the shield slung on his back, Steve subtly bumps shoulders with Nat. He says to Hill, "I've been informed that it's closer to the ninja kind."

"Oh dear God, someone's shown you that," Hill says. "Never mind. Sorry, Cap. Weird day."

This is so out of the ordinary that both Steve and Natasha turn to give her a look.

Hill sighs. "I got an invite to my class reunion. High school class."

"Ohhh," says Nat with appropriate solemnity.

"Shut up, Romanoff," says Hill easily.

"Can't... talk about the job?" Steve asks.

Hill shakes her head. "No, it's not that. It's... I've changed so much since high school. Never mind recognizing anyone else, I doubt I'd recognize myself."

"Oh," says Steve. "I wouldn't know anything about _that_."

Nat laughs so hard that she starts to snort.

For the rest of the day, Steve walks around with the tiniest smug smile on his face.

That night, he lies in bed and stares at the ceiling of his apartment. He's had a lot of selves. It's in his nature to _keep_ all of them, because there's always something trying to rip it all away. It's rarely the fight he comes for, the doozy's almost always the fight that comes to him. 

He's the youngest 94-year-old on the planet, and it's time he figured out that people who live that long? Don't really live one life. It's a series of lifetimes. Phases. The future is full of people who don't expect to die at age thirty. Or worry about making it to age twenty.

Steve's only strange because one of his lifetimes has a seventy-year gap wedged at the end, courtesy of a power-hungry madman and the Arctic Ocean.

He drifts off past midnight thinking of Natasha's laugh. Maybe... maybe he ought to let his younger self have his own laughter, the play of moonlight on her skin, the sad knowing smile he can't quite recall.

*

"Now what is it that you needed to ask so badly that you slipped away from the muckety mucks to see me?"

Steve dips his head in the face of Peggy's narrowed eyes. She's had a string of bad days; when the text came in that she seemed more herself, Steve capitalized on his squeaky-clean reputation and cut out of a working lunch. "Peg, would you mind if I learned how to dance from someone else?" She's quiet for a moment and Steve babbles on. "I keep using my shield for a partner, but it can't wear heels."

"I knew I had a good reason for shooting it," says Peggy.

Steve laughs and laughs.

Peggy raises her chin. "Wherever do you get these romantic notions? Of course you may. In private, I hope. They say 'the internet is forever,' and I'd rather not come across your gyrations on some video site—"

"God, _no_ , Peggy. My two left feet are safe from Vine. It's a... colleague of mine. She's discreet."

"I take it you have yet to ask her?" Peggy eyes him knowingly.

"She'll say yes. For the novelty," Steve predicts with confidence.

Peggy watches him for a moment more. "Don't leave it for later, hm? Now then, humor me and send an assistant to Clyde's so I might vicariously enjoy your scarfing down a few sacks of food. You're too sunken around the cheeks to be going dancing."

Fresh from a week-long special forces op, Steve can only shake his head. "Now you sound like Bucky."

He regrets it as soon it's out of his mouth. Peggy falters, and searches his face. "That's Sergeant Barnes, is it?"

"He's been gone a long time," Steve says quickly.

"Ah. Yes." Steve holds his breath as she scans the room. "You grew up with him, did you not? Those ones do tend to stick in the mind. Did I ever tell you the one about my brother and a pony and a ha-ha wall?"

"Please do," Steve says, relaxing. He resolves to call Nat tonight.

* 

The first step is the worst. 

After Steve asks, they bicker for nearly two weeks about the particulars, from location — an old safehouse of hers, a wide-planked attic still inhabited by pigeons — to secrecy, because for a spy, Nat is an insufferable gossip about anything not stamped 'confidential'. Clint is dealt in; they are both in agreement that Tony must never know.

His bravado dissolves when she sweeps in wearing an actual dress. A knee-length circle skirt is far from scandalous for the present day or the olden days. No, it's the pair of V-shaped sleeves which halts his higher brain functions— he hasn't seen her bare shoulders in eighty years. Not even when she broke her ribs outside Wakanda.

"Don't just stand there, help me out," Nat grumbles. Steve's moving before she finishes her sentence; she's carrying a pair of full-length mirrors. "I did not," she says drily, "dress up like a pin-up girl for your edification, Rogers. It helps to see our ankles."

Steve picks up the mirrors and retrieves the hammer weighing down her pocket. He's only blushing a little. "That's after my time, Romanoff," he says as she picks her way back down the narrow stairs. "And our pin-ups didn't bother with skirts."

At floor-level she flips him the bird.

They're hanging the last of the mirrors when Steve blurts out, "I've never seen you wear something that nice before."

Nat doesn't say anything. Steve sees her knuckles tighten on the glass. He feels like jumping out the window, he knows what she wears on her solo missions, he's seen the pictures in the files, he knows why they taught her how to dance. 

To cover his mistake, he says, "You're makin' me feel bad for not wearing a jacket and tie."

To cover her discomfort, she says, "Skin-tight is ideal for correcting form." She looks up at him, and his breath catches. "I need to see you."

Steve hauls himself back to the present. "It's not a mission," he says softly. They face each other.

The first step is the worst, her iPod on murmuring out a jazz standard Steve's sure she recorded from his own collection (and he should ask how), because while it's easy to park his right hand on her fabric belt, his left hand lands on hers. And suddenly Steve remembers the last time their palms touched like _this_ , the flush sweeping up the column of her throat, their muted cries filling the room. Each other's ears.

"It is a mission," she says. Her lips quirk. 

Oddly terrified that they might dance cheek-to-cheek, Steve's gaze drops— to the arrow pendant nestled in the dip of her collarbone.

In the stilled air of the room, a spicy incense wafts up, almost as pungent as when a Desert Rat procured some North African souvenir that Steve had mistaken for a snuff box. It's Nat's perfume. It's from nowhere Steve has ever been.

He grimaces. Keeps his palm level so she can steer, though he's supposed to lead, elbows locked at a distance. "Fine, it's a mission. Try not to get your feet broken."

*

They manage to survive the box-step. 

They kick up enough dust to send his younger self into a coughing fit, and that's not all. The pigeons are long gone by the time they break out the water bottles, scared off by the plenitude of cursing. 

"I should have worn my steel-toed boots!"

"I said I was sorry," says Steve, flushing. "And I warned you."

Nat points at him. "You do not make any sense. You should not be so unambiguously good at fighting and so bad at dancing."

Steve catches the reflection of her nape. He bites the inside of his mouth, aware that it tightens his jawline. "Did I hurt you?" he asks.

"Oh please," she says. "This is fun." She sweeps a hand over her skirt, her toes knocking, and Steve thinks about leaning in, and she says, "It's natural to feel like that."

Her eyes are like knives, her mouth is amused. 

Steve nearly bangs on the mirror as he recoils. "Sorry, Nat, I—"

"I mean it's extended physical contact, you'd have to be a fossil not to feel something. Oh," she smirks. "Snap."

And Steve can only taste dust. _You taught me how to feel like that._ He'd only sketched it out in his mind, before Natalie, and after everyone had gone away he was sure he'd dreamt of dancing with her. And now he is, sort of, and Natalie is nowhere close. 

She mistakes his expression for the usual awkwardness. "Come on. I will figure out your paradox, even if I have to sacrifice all my toes." She rises. Offers her hand.

Steve can do nothing but take it. 

The second time around she is more physical with him, except he's fairly sure no professional dance instructor would be like this. She punches his shoulders to keep them straight, she kicks his shins to get him moving. She calls him rude names in Russian when he loses the beat. And Steve does muddle through a few more dances, even if she has to lead, and it's fantastic and terrible at the same time. 

He might still love her. 

He has his love of Peggy to compare (and he knows Nat's chippyness is partly to distract him from that shadow). He loves Peggy as she is now. Except there is no Natalie now, the kid who kept her in his heart — and he was of age but he was a _kid_ , he was a kid when he stepped out of the casket — who sketched the shape of the hands steering him now, that kid doesn't know Nat. 

Suddenly they stop. With a flick of her wrist, Nat kills the music.

"Of course you suck—" she says in a revelatory tone. 

"Nat," Steve growls.

"—you suck at dancing because the moment you learn the steps, you start to improvise. You don't even know you're doing it, do you?" She yanks at his arm and helplessly he raises it to twirl her, around and around, her gaze somehow snapping back to his, and Steve is dizzied, it feels like being— "You, you, you, I've figured out Captain America's secret!"

"I've got a couple of boxes of Cracker Jacks, do you want a prize?"

"No, because I should have known. Even before you knew. Steve, when you fight, you improvise. It's like you're stuck in the jazz age."

"There are worse ages."

"This means you never learn the steps. When you fight. This is counterintuitive," Nat says, slightly impressed, "but you let your enemies lead. You know where they're going, so you sling your fancy Frisbee and throw your badass self at them. Which is good for your day job. Bad news for us. Again!" The music re-starts.

He grins at her, and she grins back. Oh, this is trouble. 

Her fragrance has warmed to rosewater and honey. 

If they were still at war, contrary to popular belief Steve could ask her for another night, another red ember for their memories. If he could pull her close right now, chest to chest, legs tangled, Steve is certain he could lead her anywhere. But they're not, and he can't, not without mixing two sides of a timeline that don't belong together. For all of what's unfair to her, Steve can't add more.

"Eyes up, Rogers."

"I wasn't looking—!"

"You were and you are. Staring at the pair of them." She smirks when he gets it. "Stop peeking at your feet."

 _'Nothing I haven't seen before.'_

Their reflections slide and turn, multifaceted. Mortality should not be this damn complicated. Steve has a mind to ask how soon they can contact Thor just to see if he's got any pertinent advice.

She tows him through another three-quarters of an hour before she calls it quits. 

"I'm teaching you knife fighting instead," Nat declares.

Steve shakes out his t-shirt, for all that it claims to wick away sweat. They're both drenched. "Hah." 

"What?"

"Something Howard said to me once. That HYDRA wouldn't come at me with a pocketknife."

"If the enemy gets wind of that, they'll throw nothing but knives at you. Your reflexes and hand-eye are good, you won't suck at it. How is your kinesthetic awareness so awful?"

"How'd you learn to dance?" Steve shoots back. Cruel; he can't be incisive like Nat, he can't be subtle. He has to ask, and it's difficult to find openings with her.

And as he suspected she would, she clams up. "I know enough to know that I don't want to know. Don't try to be like me," she says with an abrupt turn. "Answer my question."

He stalls by ordering a few bags of food, which they must pick up at the corner to avoid compromising her safehouse. Halfway down the first flight, Steve notes how their shoes have scraped tracks in the dust. 

The sun's set but its afterimage lingers. As they walk, Steve can't help but lean into her. In a move which telegraphs a fond pity, Nat keeps a hand on his back. Or perhaps it's some undercover spy thing. Certainly no one looks at them twice.

It's easy to be this casual with her. "I'm wired to have a smaller body. The shield is simpler, in a way. The future hasn't warped the laws of physics too badly. But me, well, these arms and legs and this barrel chest isn't what I grew up with. I was pickin' fights as a pipsqueak for too long."

"Now I can't un-see you fighting like a pipsqueak. You _do_ , don't you?" She sounds awed and horrified as she pictures it; the combat videos are in his file. "So your big stupid body is your destiny? They all said it was some other big stupid—"

"Nat."

She clicks her tongue. "—some other piece of you. Those reflexes can be trained out! Steve, you literally have the golden standard of bodies. Why don't you own it?"

"I don't," he responds automatically. Then he catches up with it, that he took the idiom for a literal question ( _Property of the U.S. Army_ ), and his eyes widen as he turns to Natasha, "Nat, not like that. I didn't mean it. It's just that... my purpose is tied up in it. Before and after the serum. It's mine, but it's mine to _sacrifice_."

"So the get-up is a shiny wrapper for the candybar inside? That," Natasha says, and her eyes are cold, her muscles taut, "Is an insult to everyone whose body is not their own. It's yours. You can use it for yourself. Don't waste it."

Steve says, miserably, "I know. I'm sorry, Nat. I always had— there were always friends around to remind me."

"Ah," she says. Then she breaks away and plucks at his shirt, smile playing on her lips. "Loosen up, Rogers. When you open up, others open up to you."

"I could say the same to you," Steve murmurs. Almost against his own wishes, he inhales, deeply. 

"You don't have to spill it all," Nat says. "You're a spiller, Steve. Might as well play to your strengths."

*

Steve spends dinner and his morning run and his long breakfast turning it all over in his mind.

Maybe he does love her. _Now._ He's not sure she would accept it if he offered, given the gigantic lie by omission between them, about the age and size of a toddler. Even if it's her lie that he's carrying. (She might forgive a lie, but perhaps not from him— not from Captain America.)

Would Nat let him in? He has a foot in the door, which is more than most people in the world could claim. Because he's... him, there's even the bare outline of a plan at the forefront of his mind.

Does he even want to open her up?

Steve isn't sure.

Steve isn't sure he's ready for wanting.

Maybe everyone's worried about him for a reason. 

And yet: he danced. That was good. He felt good. One step at a time.

He taps his little 21st century to-do list, the one he doesn't actually need given his prodigious memory. It's a small notebook. Half of it crossed out, seen, done.

And Steve thinks that he wouldn't trade his connection with Natasha for the might-have-beens of a budding romance. A doomed romance, at that. Never mind the spy stuff, the stubborn little scrapper that-he-was would have _fought_ , eventually, and probably pissed off Natalie before getting himself killed.

Besides, even if Steve wanted Natasha to open up, he doesn't think he's the man who could convince her.

*

Jesus wept, Natasha has got to open up! Steve's surly and silent all the way back to HQ. The mission, SHIELD clean-up or not, involved _hostages_ , and Natasha and her secret agenda nearly ballsed it up.

Steve sets his jaw against a long, creative list of curses. Dealing with Natasha is like peeling an onion.

At least if his eyes water, at worst only the medics might come over with eyedrops. Steve is radiating anger. Not even chatterbox Rumlow dares approach.

Steve doesn't know if it's his appetite for punishment or Natasha's sneaked-in apology, but somehow they end up on the same transport. He resolutely does not look at her. (He doesn't have to; he knows her every curve, where the flesh gives, where she—) Besides, she's probably keeping an eye on him in case he spills the beans about her little errand for Fury.

He still sits downwind of her, relative to a cabin vent recirculating the air.

He's jealous, he thinks distantly. Jealous of himself, of his younger self. Just when he thought there was nothing new with him; besides Bucky and his Ma when she was healthier, there's little of his youth that he'd envy. Yet it's true. He was with her. He had her. (He was the one they chose to love.) And now—

No, he didn't. They shared something, on that sultry night in Brooklyn, but they didn't quite share each other. Any more would have been impossible. Little doubt that Natalie had a handler.

Natasha has Nick Fury.

Steve thought he was angry _before_. 

*

Then his (their) secret past is the least of his worries, because everything — since before the ice, maybe since before Azzano — everything goes to hell.

*

He doesn't want to intrude. Except that Nat brushed his hand on the way out. She followed the body. Steve followed her. 

Steve holds up the wall and fingers the gadget that Nick died for. Nat wants him to stay, so he'll stay. 

He's buried so many. Abruptly he realizes this makes him singularly unqualified to lend comfort to the grieving. Even with Nat's line of work, his dead may outnumber hers. There's a groove worn into his heart, and it would be cruel to make anyone else shoulder their burdens the same way. Sam might understand, and then he'd probably remind him: recent history is still history. That he needs the reminder says more about Steve than it does the rest of the world. 

Reluctantly, he calls her name. "Natasha." 

*

Steve advances on her, and Natasha steps back like they're practicing the tango and not like it's all falling down around his ears, like he can't keep a lid on it anymore. 

He can't.

He rounds on her because she was on his _team_ , on all his teams since he woke up, and as far as he knows, all his teams have tried to kill him. Most if not all of them have lied. Later he would be ashamed that he threatened his friend, that he threw his considerable strength into threatening a woman, but this is Natasha.

"Bye, bye bikinis," she says, the last little pinprick before the moment deflates.

Steve inhales. In so many words he tells Natasha she's beautiful. Reality resolves itself. They've been close like this before, and it doesn't even matter. The awkward kid who would've jumped the Empire State Building for a girl named Natalie is a stranger to him. Those two are nothing more than phantoms. Had Natalie known war like this, and concealed it from him? Now Steve knows what it's like to take a bullet, and naturally she knows it too.

This is different from before. This is the same: Natasha. For years now, for more than a single solitary night on the other side of a lifetime, it's been Natasha.

*

In the mall, he doesn't even blush when she shoves him into a changing stall and tells him to strip. He gets another flash of before-and-after, then she rains clothes on his head with the hangers still in them. He swears under his breath. He hears her in the next stall over taking off her clothes too, and thinks: 'they laughed more, the first time.' And: 'every fastener must be second nature now.' Like this century, worn so easily on her skin.

How many times have her scars have been erased?

Is he party to this... Is he as bad as Nick Fury was? But Nat's teaching him how to stay alive on the run, and he has to pay attention, here-and-now, eyes front.

*

With her vicious squeeze of his shoulder, the fiction tumbles out, and then the content of Natasha's chirpy patter sinks in, _what he just said_ catches up to him, and this time Steve does stumble for a few crucial seconds as smog-choked daydreams explode in his head. Then he's whipping back-and-forth from their tissue-thin cover story to what's on the screen to sheer mortified indignation, 'Really, _really_ , Steven? Marrying her?'

And he doesn't have time to counter that it's a reasonable fantasy for a hard-up kid whose only actual associations with girls were via his best friend's sisters before they have to _run_. 

No, walk. Nat says to walk. Quickly. (Not quick enough.) 

Steve's already scrambled on adrenaline and sleep debt, he's been plastered to Natasha's side for hours, so when she gives him the order, it's all he can do not to kiss her like he hasn't seen Natalie in a hundred years.

Between keeping his hands _still_ — off the curves and clasps and the bare strip of skin under her shirt — and trying not to lap at her bottom lip like he knows she likes, it's a terrible kiss. Just awful. A hundred years is about how long since he's been this nervous. Natalie would laugh at him; Natasha does.

Steve's broken into so much gooseflesh and cold sweat that he answers her truthfully. He hopes it was flippant enough to cover just precisely how comfortable he felt.

*

And _now_ , when they're stuck in the cab of a truck racing for a last-chance destination, Natasha's never before sounded so much like Natalie. Steve's not sure whom he's more annoyed with. Then he's annoyed with himself for even thinking that. 

"Nobody special, then?"

Steve snorts despite himself. He hopes that wasn't a wistful note he just heard, though maybe that wasn't entirely aimed at him. 

He does feel pretty clever when he answers, "Believe it or not, it's kind of hard to find someone with shared life experience."

Which on the whole is actually sad, but Steve's too irritated to care.

Of course he knows Natalie was a cover. He knew it back then, even if he hadn't understood the particulars at the time. And he reminds himself sternly that Natalie isn't even here to argue with. He's dealing with Natasha. (And that's kind of his own fault.)

But he's tired, and though he wants to trust her... she can't be cover after cover after cover, no matter how much he peels back. Can she?

With a pang, he thinks of Natalie wiping off her make-up.

"It's a good way not to die, though," she says, and Steve cannot tell her they've had this very argument before.

Then she asks the question. ( _Who — am I — do you want — me like this — me to — do this, like this, can you — be — happy?_ ) Steve glances over. He is suddenly in total agreement with his younger self.

"How about a friend," he says.

He sees her face change for a moment. He catches that flicker, and then pulls his eyes back on the road.

For the first time in his life, Steve feels like he can _continue_. Like he can do something with all the salvage of his chopped-up life. If Natalie had stayed, he would have reached out to her with the same. He could pick up where he left off not just from before the ice, but before the war. As terrible as everything seems right now, he can offer this in earnest, from himself, to as many covers and versions as she can put up. 

All they have to do is survive this nightmare. 

Situation normal.

He's tempted to tell her the truth right then (a perfect moment, don't miss it this time) but then again Natalie had told him the same thing, hadn't she? She had chosen to abandon that life in order to survive. Whatever his own sentiments, it's a choice which Steve ought to honor.

*

When that godawful Zola intones her name and date of birth, Steve feels a burst of relief. 

He didn't tell her. 

He revealed nothing in the presence of SHIELD's bugs, or Tony's AI, or Natasha's native curiosity. 

Zola has a birth name but that's all it has, it doesn't know. 

No one else knows. From this, at least, she is safe. 

The moment is engulfed as the horrors roll inexorably on.

*

As fire and brimstone (the rubble of past sins) hail around them, Steve holds tight to Natasha, tucking her head under his chin, his body, his shield. He holds her close, and his serum-vivified memory flashes with certainty: _it's her, it was always her, she's the same, you were smaller but she's the same_. In the moment when the concussion wave hits, he's praying he can save her.

When his hearing comes back, he picks up the faint thread of her breath. She smells the same. He hopes this isn't what her fear smells like, that he wasn't so callow as to overlook that the first time.

_'Forgive me, Natalie. I should have told you: you were my sweetest memory from before the war.'_

They're coming. He ignores the not unexpected fractures on his shield-arm, the burns and lacerations, and lifts her up. She's light. She's heavier than he was when he first set foot in this place.

"Nat," he whispers, running and leaping through the fiery wreckage as fast as he dares, trying to locate the nearest creek in case of dogs. "Be still, Natasha. I have you."

*

In the mirror she wears blank façade, and her smile is trapped behind it. She can't even muster it for a lie. Steve nearly says something about how _young_ she looks. 

He wants to take her hand, but it's twisting in her damp hair.

Her smile struggles out a couple of times, and Steve remembers how Natalie had smiled at him like that, all that night, how he wondered what she was seeing that made her so sad. 

She asks the question.

He tells her how he trusts her.

A jab to her face would have rattled her less. 

Steve Rogers could not love her more. 

"And I'm always honest," he says, and he does mean to go on — to say that she doesn't owe him anything, that she's already saved his life — but he's searching for a natural opening because he's never before seen Nat this spooked.

Except that's exactly when her lips curl up into that impish smirk. "Well, you seem pretty chipper for someone who just found out they died for nothing." 

'I have you,' he thinks, and tries not to remember their last time alone in a bedroom together, her lips just as lush, skin clean of artificial color, eyes full of tenderness. 

Love isn't the answer she needs, not now (not then). Another test. Her ritual. It'll keep. Steve gets as far as telling her the same thing he told Peggy. Then Sam comes around with the call for breakfast, and they've got to get back to work. (There are files, and then there are files, thank God.) 

*

 _am i too late_

*

Numb and shattered in the HYDRA paddywagon, it drums into Steve's heart and head that this is his punishment for not wanting to remember what was found in that weapons factory.

He'd sat in on Bucky's debriefing, forcing his way in like he had for everything to do with that mission. He was well aware of what Bucky had left out. (They didn't speak of Bucky, only of Steve and _his_ serum, to protect—) Even if Peggy had spotted something awry, she would not have made more than a marginal note in the SSR files, given Steve's implicit wishes. (There are files, and there are _files_ , Peggy had always told him.)

She had never seen reason to investigate further. No one had.

("None of that's—") 

In all that time, Steve was the only person with all the pieces to tease out the extent of Zola's plan. The only one around who had known, who had lived their before-and-after, who could have _mentioned_ that Bucky was that worm-eaten scum's primary focus. That his survival was more than miraculous. Steve put it together in two shocked seconds; seventy years of analysts and historians could've done as much. Instead Steve had gone and embraced the ice and _buried it_. 

He had been in the process of forgetting. He'd helped those nebulous forces along. 

("—your fault, Steve.") 

And now Bucky Barnes does not remember him.

*

So as Natasha huddles in a dark corner of the old dam, bent over a tablet to rehearse the destruction of SHIELD, Steve comes to find her.

"Are you nervous?"

"Do this every day," Natasha says. Her tone tries for nonchalant and falls short. The weary note is one that Steve's heard before.

"You said," Steve says quietly, "That I'm a terrible liar."

She looks up, then. Her eyes are sharp.

Steve stops himself from stuffing his hands in his pockets. He crouches down so he's smaller, so he looks up at her and so she can see how beautiful he thinks she is. He leans. "I knew you before," he whispers into her ear.

He feels rather than sees her eyes widen.

He can tell she wants to call him a liar. 

But she can't.

The words tumble out so easily. "Another double date, I thought, just like all the others." Another rejection, he doesn't say. "We ditched them in the movie theater. I don't remember the picture. Walked you back to your place." Steve turns his head, and smiles at her. "You were my first, Natalie."

"Holy shit, Rogers," she breathes. 

"You wouldn't have said that back then," Steve murmurs. "But you're prettier now. You didn't laugh as much then, but you did. We did. We had laughter."

She's shaking her head. "Our titles... my title has been passed down. Shared."

Steve says, "It was Bucky who set you up with me. He met you, or you met him first." Her elbow jerks towards her scar. She is shocked enough to show how she absorbs the coincidence, registers the irony. There's no recognition. Steve's not surprised; they're all so different now. He only knows Bucky's face so well from those stretches without a good mirror between them, when they checked each other after shaving. 

Her eyes track back to his, and she gives him a look which plainly says: 'That proof depends on his memory.' 

Steve nods. "There's a drawing of you in pencil. You took it with you. It might be long gone, now, but there's a chance of something tangible floating around." He swallows, because the next is hard: it's the worst of his lie and the best of her truth. "The scent of your skin. I can't mistake it anymore; body chemistry only changes with sicknesses, which I know, and foods and drugs, which I'm learning. When we danced, you sweated away your perfume."

"Why did you not...?" Natasha sounds ripped apart, caught between astonishment and grief.

"Because I decided on my own not to blow your cover. I'm sorry. That was presumptuous of me, I know, and probably dangerous. The point is if you've got the jitters about this," Steve lays his hand on hers, still poised over the tablet. "You ought to know that there are still other covers. You won't be blowing them all today."

"You are," Natasha begins. She shakes her head. Starts again. "When we're done with this, I should track Clint down and collect on a bet. Retroactive counts, right?"

Steve huffs a laugh. He wants to tell Bucky about all this, it's a helluva a story. He has to get Bucky back to tell him. 

Natasha touches his cheek; her finger comes away wet. She draws out every word. "Apparently I did not teach you how to kiss."

Despite the obvious bait, Steve protests. "You did!" And the memory of those kisses come rushing back. He catches his breath. "It's just that you're Natasha, and we were in public. The Natalie I knew was private. What we had was private, I know I never told Bucky or anyone else. And you... you had to be hiding me from your handlers, which probably kept me kicking around long enough to run into Dr. Erskine. You were saving me back then, too. So in case I haven't said it lately— thank you. You're a good friend."

Natasha looks down at their linked hands. "Still didn't trust me," she says. "You shouldn't, Steve. You don't know what I am. Neither do I."

"I know you," Steve insists. He wants, more than anything, to be able to shake those memories free. "I trusted you with the important things. You were very kind, Nat. You didn't have to tell me you were leaving. You told me... you said you would forget me, that it was better that you did. You didn't have to do any of it. And _now_ , I trust you with all of it now."

Natasha stares at him. "This is impossible," she says. Her hands close, her nails bite her palms. _The red in my ledger._

"It's a lot of years, I know," he says. Gently he tugs her hands open. "You also said we could choose the pain we bore, that the choice defined us. Maybe there's something to that. Take it from the 95-year-old: don't dwell on the burden. Those years can be yours again. You can use them now. That's why I wanted to tell you."

Natasha sits up. Pulls away. Her eyes are cool, and they glisten.

"No other reason?"

Steve thanks God he got a chance with Nat. He prays he can have his chance with Bucky. If she tries to stop him— he swallows, and pats her knee.

"I owe you," Steve says. "You taught me that it's rude to come to bed with socks on." 

Natasha throws her head back and laughs, loud, the sound echoing down the dim tunnel. "You're a shit liar," she says. And Steve stands, and nods, knowing it for the blessing it is.

*

"I could kill you myself," Natasha hisses over the hum of machines. "Do you have to be so stupidly brave, every time?"

Through the haze of pain, Steve smiles. This is familiar, her wanting to protect him.

"You were always the brave one, Nat," he says. He drifts back into a healing slumber before he can hear her in-taken breath, before she backs away.

*

The file is real. So is Natasha, who found it for him.

Her smile is, too. Steve can't help but return it. He wonders if this is Natalya's smile. 

He asks. 

"I don't know," she says. "I'm going to find out." 

"That might take a while. Maybe you ought to start with the last known sighting." 

Steve picks out two sets of footsteps trudging away from them, Nick in one direction, Sam in another. Steve wonders if she can hear them, too. 

Wind bends the branches. But for the remains of the dead and the ghosts of the departed, they are alone. 

"Tell me about her. I don't remember her."

"You said," says Steve, "Dancing never hurts."

She draws a shaky breath like they're removing the bullet all over again.

"Steve," she says.

He catches her hand, and the strength of her grip transfers to his as he lifts her _en pointe_ in her leather boots, on the dewy grass. They hold there, suspended, nose to nose.

"You were wrong about one thing: you said you couldn't choose to be good, and that I was the one who could. That's a load of bull, Natasha. You just did the world a whole lot of good."

She turns her head as though listening for an echo that's not there.

Steve is. He whispers. "You were my sweet dream." 

Among the graves, she kisses him: a touch of her lips to his cheek.

He releases her. Her eyes are young. Her eyes are old. He's never seen them this color before. She looks at him like she's looking at a mirror; perhaps she is. And at that moment Steve knows: together they will have a thousand goodbyes. This time he's the one saying it. 

She's the one walking away into the morning light.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

>  _Proshchai_ the Russian folksong may have as many versions as decades. The original _Proschay_ was adapted by Theodore Bikel: 1959 [live recording](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQTOWRRfpLs) and 1956 studio version with NSFW album art ([lyrics](http://die-augenweide.de/byrds/songop/proshchai.htm)). American big bands adapted it during Steve and Bucky's Brooklyn youth: _Pross-Tchai_ (1939), performed by [the Andrews Sisters](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwO5BMw0ypM), and a jauntier _Prosschai_ by [Artie Shaw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXe_9aELKzU). The Limeliters did a Russian variant in 1960 (see Bikel link for lyrics). Nowadays there are electronica and metal versions. Recommended: Mudcat Café digs deeper in forum thread 71650.   
>  Set aside: [_How Do I Know It's Real?_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAHuejcHIq0)  performed by Maxine Sullivan & orchestra, 19th March 1942, New York City; [lyrics](http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/h/howdoiknowitsreal.shtml), music by Dan Shapiro, Jerry Seelen, Lester Lee; [_The Second Time Around_](http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/bing-crosby/performance-the-second-time-around-and-other-love-songs/3581/) 1960 Bing Crosby vehicle, music by Jimmy Van Heusen & Sammy Cahn, was obvious but didn't fit.   
> [Video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LISYM3ifgx0): View from MetLife Building Roof, Manhattan, NYC (aka the top of Stark Tower)   
>  I'm no BPAL enthusiast, but it just seemed Nat might be into it. Also they support comic book artists. The first scent is supposedly Mouse's Long and Sad Tale, and the second (anachronistically!) is Eve - Only Lovers Left Alive.   
> The Desert Rats were the 7th Armoured Division (UK), tanks and artillery, who fought the North Africa campaign before being deployed into Italy and the follow-up to Normandy.   
> Above are Youtube links unless indicated. This fic contains verbatim quotes from both the canon and the source fic, and is meant as a companion for Avengers 1 & Cap 2, with a side of meta. (I highly encourage re-viewing the truck scene.) That is to say: bask in the source material, it's not mine, it loves you, even if Steve cries. P.S. So much appreciation and happy waves to readers for breaking the century mark: congrats to Rastro13 for leaving the 100th kudos. P.P.S. Thank you so much everyone for keeping this afloat! Cheers and sailors to Fizzleout for the 200th kudos.


End file.
